Saloon Bar
- Artist: Edward Le Bas
- Date: 1940
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 899 × 1104 × 23 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the “Saloon Bar” by Edward Le Bas, painted in 1940. Oil on canvas, the work measures 34 3/4 × 43 1/4 inches and captures a lively Knightsbridge pub at the height of the war. Le Bas, both a painter and a collector, studied at the Royal College of Art with Percy Horton in the 1920s and, thanks to family wealth, travelled widely before turning to wartime subjects.
In the canvas a group of adults gathers around a polished bar, their hands clutching bottles and glasses. A soda syphon sits on the counter, a newspaper in a soldier’s lap, and a woman in a hat chats with a man over a pint of beer. The composition balances the mundane and the heroic: the everyday comforts of a bar juxtaposed with the undercurrent of wartime tension.
Le Bas painted this scene in his Bedford Square studio from studies taken in the very pub during the early months of 1939‑45, as recorded in a letter dated 27 December 1955. It first appeared at the Royal Academy in 1940 and was later acquired by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest. The piece was also featured in the 2015‑2016 “Art and Alcohol” exhibition, highlighting the cultural role of bars in Britain’s history.
See it in person
Saloon Bar is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
